Airy worlds or barren rocks? On the survivability of secondary atmospheres around the TRAPPIST-1 planets.

JWST is currently at the forefront in the search for exoplanet atmospheres. However, the observation of atmospheres of Earth-like planets pushes the limits of the instruments, often requiring multiple observations to be combined. Their interpretation requires complementary theoretical studies to test plausible atmospheric models. We aim to determine the atmospheric survivability of rocky planets around late M-type dwarfs by modelling the upper atmosphere of the TRAPPIST-1 planets' response to incoming stellar extreme ultraviolet and X-ray (XUV) radiation. This is done using a self-consistent thermo-chemical code to create a grid of models simulating possible atmospheres. Specifically we study the atmospheric mass loss due to Jeans escape induced by XUV radiation. Our models indicate that even Jeans escape is catastrophically large for these N2 or CO2 dominated atmospheres over evolutionary timescales, which has important observational implications.